Water in the Desert

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Its starting again. The long process toward meaningful change. What do you do if you know how long the journey is, and you are already tired. Almost like you are crossing the desert and after the car starts you watch the needle drop to E. At that point its not if you will stop and get stuck, but when you will stop and get stuck. The desert seems to stretch out forever and shimmer on the horizon. You check your canteen and find that its not empty, but it is no where near full.  The only way forward, to make it is across, is to drive through and when that ceases to be possible, to hike through. Do you dare shift gears and depress the gas pedal as your truck shutters forward?

Faith seems so elusive sometimes. It is easy to tout faith when you've got air-conditioning and know when the next stop is for Gas. But thankfully faith is not measured when we have enough, when we are strong enough, smart enough, nice enough, or even put together. It is measured by the times we move forward without a clear path, a guaranteed destination, or an assurance beyond a still small voice that we will find it. We will find water in the desert. As you drive West the landscape changes and even the air clears. Endless green starts to patch and yellow to brown and dust. Leaves cease to rustle and tumble weeds takes their place. In literature and cinema the West has been romanticized and mythologized into being the formative place. The place where the wild and young chase their dreams and the cowboys chase the wind. It is rarely the destination that forms us, but more often the journey.

 There is a part of the journey that I find interesting is the Ordeal. A moment in a journey when the hero is at the brink of failure. A moment when all seems lost. When you watch or read fiction it is rife with the heroic story for that novel, comic book, movie, or show. Almost every story has this moment. I have watched countless people reach this moment and turn around. Just as they were about to beat their greatest test and learn something exceptional about themselves. More and more commonly today, people reach the point of greatest difficulty and start looking at the exit sign, a route out, or simply some sort of escape. I've felt it, I've escaped, and regret doesn't even begin to describe how it feels to have an opportunity to come through and instead to fall through. To be more and at the last moment choose to be less.

It may not seem like it, but past the shimmering desert horizon there's water. You may not see it, or have seen it. In the moments when thirst becomes all you think about, it may be standing beneath your feet but there is water in the desert, because God put it there. He knows our needs before we ever do. Jesus said it best so he should end this article with Water in the Desert for our souls, "26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?"

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Mt 6:26). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

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